MAETERLINCK ON HAMLET.
Maeterlinck, in his first essay, "The Treasure of the Humble," is, undoubtedly, mystical. He does not argue, or define, or explain, he asserts, but even in that book and far more so in his second, "Wisdom and Destiny," it is real life which absorbs him as Alfred de Sutro his translator points out. In this book "he endeavours in all simplicity to tell what he sees." He is a Seer.
Maeterlinck's aim is to show that contrary to the usual idea, what we call Fate, Destiny, is not something apart from ourselves, which exercises power over us, but is the product of our own souls.
He takes many examples to prove this, of which Hamlet is one. Man, said Maeterlinck, is his own Fate in an inner sense; he is superior to all circumstances, when he refuses to be conquered by them. When his soul is wise and has initiative power, it cannot be conquered by external events, and happiness is inevitable to such a soul. Maeterlinck asks: Where do we find the fatality in Hamlet? Would the evil of Claudius and Queen Gertrude have spread its influence if a wise man had been in the Palace? If a dominant, all powerful soul—a Jesus—had been in Hamlet's palace at Elsinore, would the tragedy of four deaths have happened? Can you conceive any wise man living in the unnatural gloom that overhung Elsinore? Is not every action of Hamlet induced by a fanatical impulse, which tells him that duty consists in revenge alone? And revenge never can be a duty. Hamlet thinks much, continues Maeterlinck, but is by no means wise. Destiny can withstand lofty thoughts but not simple, good, tender and loyal thoughts. We only triumph over destiny by doing the reverse of the evil she would have us commit. No tragedy is inevitable. But at Elsinore no one had vision—no one saw—hence the catastrophe. The soul that saw would have made others see. Because of Hamlet's pitiful blindness, Laertes, Ophelia, the King, Queen, and Hamlet die. Was his blindness inevitable? A single thought had sufficed to arrest all the forces of murder. Hamlet's ignorance puts the seal on his unhappiness, and his shadow lay on Horatio, who lacked the courage to shake himself free. Had there been one brave soul to cry out the truth, the history of Elsinore had not been shrouded in horror. All depended not on destiny, but on the wisdom of the wisest, and this Hamlet was; therefore he was the centre of the drama of Elsinore, for he had no one wiser than himself on whom to depend.
Maeterlinck's doctrine of the soul and its power over Destiny is very captivating, but it is doubtful if he was fortunate in his choice of Hamlet as an example of ignorance and blindness, and of failure to conquer fate, through lack of soul-power.
How Hamlet should have acted is not told us, but that it was his duty to have given up revenge is clearly suggested. We might, perhaps, sum up Hamlet's right course, from the hints Maeterlinck has given us, in a sentence. Had he relinquished all idea of revenge and forgiven his uncle and mother, he would have ennobled his soul, gained inward happiness, spread a gracious calm around and have so deeply influenced his wicked relations, that they would have become repentant and reformed. Thus his evil Destiny would have been averted and we should have had no tragedy of Hamlet. This explanation sounds rather conventional and tract-like put into ordinary language, but, indeed, Maeterlinck's doctrine might be compressed into a syllogism:—
All the wise are serene,
Hamlet was not serene,
Hamlet was not wise.
That is the simple syllogism by which Maeterlinck tests human nature. But Hamlet's nature cannot be packed into a syllogism. A Theorist, who tries to fit into his theory a peculiar nature cannot always afford to understand that nature. The external event that froze Hamlet's soul with horror, and deprived it of "transforming power" was a supernatural event, not "disease, accident, or sudden death!" The mandate laid on his soul was a supernatural mandate, and as Judge Webb said in a suggestive and interesting paper: "The Genuine text of Shakespeare," October number of the "National Review, 1903," "it was utterly impossible for that soul to perform it," or it might be added, to cast it aside. He was betrayed by the apparition "into consequences as deep as those into which Macbeth was betrayed by the instruments of darkness—the witches." We cannot reason about Maeterlinck's thought that if expressed "would have arrested all the forces of murder" because we do not know what the thought was, nor can any one gauge or estimate rightly the power of Hamlet's soul to conquer external events, without taking into careful account that the Vision from another world came to Hamlet, when he was outraged at the re-marriage of his mother and full of emotion that the sudden death of his father called forth in his meditative mind.[4] But Maeterlinck never refers to anything of this sort. He does not seem to realise what the effects of the vision must have been on a complicated character—on "a great gentleman in whom the courtier's, scholar's eye, tongue, sword, were all united." Hamlet was not an example of the normal type of the irresolute man—but the mandate laid upon his nature, it could not perform. The vision was his destiny—for Destiny lay in the nature of the mandate, as well as the nature of the man, and unhappiness was inevitable; yet Maeterlinck says, "No tragedy is inevitable, the wise man can be superior to all circumstances by the initiative of the soul. To be able to curb the blind force of instinct is to be able to curb external destiny." Did not Hamlet curb his instincts of love for Ophelia, and love for books and philosophy, under pressure of the great commandment laid upon him? He could not curb the power of his intellect—it was too subtle and supreme, but he concealed all else. Yet Hamlet could not escape his Destiny, by curbing his instincts. The initiative of his soul worked against the duty he had to perform. And it was through his "simple, tender, good," thoughts of, and love for his father that he kept to his task, and could not "withstand his complicated destiny." Maeterlinck is surely wrong, too, in saying Hamlet was moved by a fanatical impulse to revenge for he spent his life in weighing pros, and cons, and in combating the idea that he must fulfil the duty laid upon him. So unfanatical was he that he even doubted at times whether the apparition was his father's spirit. But supposing there had been "one brave soul to cry out the truth" (Maeterlinck does not say what the truth was); we will suppose that Hamlet had resolved to forgive fully and generously, would he, then, have gained the fortitude and serenity, which Maeterlinck evidently means by inner happiness? Not if he kept a shred of his inner nature. Hamlet "saw no course clear enough to satisfy his understanding." Could such a nature be serene? But was it unwise? Judicious, wise, and witty when at ease; he could not escape the dark moods that made him indifferent to the visible world.
"If OEdipus had had the inner refuge of a Marcus Aurelius, what could Destiny have done to him?" asks Maeterlinck. Fate we suppose would have had no power over him, if he had calmly reasoned over the terrible circumstances in which he found himself involved, and if he preserved his equanimity to the end, as M. Aurelius would have done. Does this prove more than that the two men may have had very different temperaments? But, individuality cannot be made to agree with theory, and can be tabulated in no science book of humanity. When Maeterlinck says, "Hamlet's ignorance puts the seal on his unhappiness," we may well ask ignorance of what? Was it ignorance of the power of will? Certainly his intellect was greater than his will. "He would have been greater had he been less great." The "concentration of all the interests that belong to humanity" was in Hamlet. Except the gifts of serenity and calmness, what did he lack? And because he was not inwardly serene, Maeterlinck considers him blind and ignorant. It is strange to connect blindness and ignorance with a wit of intellectual keenness, an imagination of a poet, and the unflinching questioning of the philosopher. Maeterlinck says: "Hamlet thinks much but is by no means wise." How does Hamlet show he had not the wisdom of life? Maeterlinck, no doubt, would dwell on his varying moods, his subtle melancholy, his nature baffled by a supernatural command. If he was not wise how strange he should have said so many words of truest wisdom both of Life and Death, "If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come; the readiness is all." We feel that Hamlet was "a being with springs of thought and feeling and action deeper than we can search." But the elements in his nature could not resolve themselves into an inner life of calm. Therefore, according to Maeterlinck, he was not wise, for he could not conquer his inner fatality—destiny in himself. Maeterlinck's ideas are very beautiful, and he writes delightfully, but his test of wisdom is questionable, for Hamlet's thoughts have captured and invaded and influenced the best minds and experiences of thinkers for centuries, How many a Shakespearean reader has felt that Hamlet is one of the very wisest of men as well as one of the most lovable and attractive! Not his ignorance, but his wisdom has borne the test of study and time. He did not bear the tragedy of life when the supernatural entered it, with an unshaken soul, but ourselves and the realities of life become clearer to us, the more we read his thoughts. If "it is we who are Hamlet," as Hazlitt said, it is a great tribute to his universality—but a greater one to ourselves. Indeed, we learn wisdom, not only from the lucubrations of the serene and calm, or from Hamlet, magnificent in thought, acute and playful, but also from Hamlet in his mortal struggles, in his deep questionings, and his melancholy.
For wisdom "dwells not in the light alone
But in the darkness and the cloud."